The Turtle Hospital in Monroe County, Florida

Photograph: The Turtle Hospital Operating Room Marathon Florida 2022.jpg by Larry D. Moore · CC BY 4.0 · Restored from the credited Wikimedia Commons file, normalized to the consistent attraction-card frame and converted to WebP by 1stFlorida.com. Portrait originals retain their complete composition over a softly blurred extension of the same photograph.

Monroe County attraction

The Turtle Hospital

Monroe County · South Florida & the Keys

A working veterinary hospital for sea turtles at Marathon, open to visitors on guided tours.

QUESTIONS THAT NAME THIS PLACE

Where Can You See Sea Turtles Nesting in Florida?

ABOUT THIS PLACE

Richie Moretti bought the Hidden Harbor Motel in 1981 and turned its saltwater pool into an aquarium. Children kept asking to see a turtle, and the state would not let him keep endangered sea turtles unless he ran a rehabilitation program, so in 1986 he started one. It is now a hospital in the literal sense, with an operating room, an ambulance van, a tide pool holding a hundred thousand gallons and twenty-three smaller tanks. The patients come in hit by boats, tangled in plastic and fishing line, or carrying the tumors caused by fibropapillomatosis, which has to be cut away surgically and often comes back. More than three thousand turtles have been treated since it opened. Tours are guided and run on a schedule with booking advised, and around seventy thousand people a year come through. Some turtles recover and go back to the sea; some cannot and stay as permanent residents, and the staff will tell you which is which

GETTING THERE

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